Background
We conducted a comparative analysis between low and high-dose postoperative radiotherapy in patients with hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HPSCC) in stage III or IV without positive ...surgical margins and extracapsular extension (ECE). Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to eliminate confounding factors and reduce bias.
Methods
The matched-pair analysis included 156 patients divided into two groups: the low-dose radiotherapy group (LD-RT 50 Gy, 78 cases) and the high-dose radiotherapy group (HD-RT 60 Gy, 78 cases). Both cohorts were statistically comparable in terms of age, gender, subsite, and TNM classification.
Results
The median follow-up time was 49 months (ranging from 5 to 100 months). The overall survival (OS) rate, progression-free survival (PFS) rate, locoregional control rate (87% vs. 85.7%;
p
= 0.754), distant metastases-free survival (79.2% vs. 76.6%;
p
= 0.506), and the occurrence of second primary tumors (96.1% vs. 93.5%;
p
= 0.347) showed no significant differences between the LD-RT group and the HD-RT group. The 3-year OS was 64.9% and 61% in the low-dose and high-dose group, respectively, and 63% in the entire group (p = 0.547). The 3-year PFS was 63.6% and 54.5% (
p
= 0.250), respectively, and the 3-year PFS of the entire group was 59.1%. Multivariate analyses revealed that pathological T and N classification, and pathological differentiation were associated with 3-year OS, PFS, and LRFS and were independent prognostic factors (
p
< 0.05). LD-RT was not associated with an increased risk of death and disease progression compared to HD-RT.
Conclusion
The results of postoperative low-dose radiotherapy did not show inferiority to those of high-dose radiation for patients with advanced hypopharyngeal cancer without positive surgical margins and ECE in terms of OS, PFS, locoregional control, and metastases-free survival.
Abstract
Sociability is crucial for survival, whereas social avoidance is a feature of disorders such as Rett syndrome, which is caused by loss-of-function mutations in
MECP2
. To understand how a ...preference for social interactions is encoded, we used in vivo calcium imaging to compare medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity in female wild-type and
Mecp2
-heterozygous mice during three-chamber tests. We found that mPFC pyramidal neurons in
Mecp2
-deficient mice are hypo-responsive to both social and nonsocial stimuli. Hypothesizing that this limited dynamic range restricts the circuit’s ability to disambiguate coactivity patterns for different stimuli, we suppressed the mPFC in wild-type mice and found that this eliminated both pattern decorrelation and social preference. Conversely, stimulating the mPFC in MeCP2-deficient mice restored social preference, but only if it was sufficient to restore pattern decorrelation. A loss of social preference could thus indicate impaired pattern decorrelation rather than true social avoidance.
The dissociation of natural gas hydrates (NGHs) during production weakens the mechanical properties of hydrate-bearing sediments (HBSs). Understanding and predicting the mechanical behaviors of HBSs ...is crucial for the safe development of NGH reservoirs. This study presents a novel approach based on the discrete element method (DEM) to describe the mechanical weakening of cementing-type gas hydrate-bearing sandy sediments (GHBSSs). Hydrate dissociation is simulated by reducing the parallel-bond radius based on a specific damage evolution law. The Weibull statistical distribution is incorporated into the model to characterize the heterogeneity of hydrates in GHBSSs. Subsequently, a series of numerical triaxial compression tests are conducted to investigate the mechanical weakening behavior of cementing-type GHBSSs and the mechanical effect of the heterogeneous distribution of hydrates. The results show that the DEM model can successfully capture the mechanical weakening behaviors of cementing-type GHBSSs during hydrate dissociation. The peak strength and secant modulus increase with increasing homogeneity index, but their sensitivities decrease as the hydrate dissociation ratio increases. Finally, a fitting equation describing the relationship among the peak strength, initial hydrate saturation, and hydrate dissociation ratio was obtained. This study is valuable for evaluating the stability of GHBSSs during hydrate production.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Mechanical properties of hydrate-bearing strata are crucial to evaluate hydrate production related geohazards. However, the mechanical parameters of the hydrate reservoirs in the Shenhu area of the ...South China Sea have been rarely reported. In this paper, the sediments from the top of the hydrate reservoirs in the Shenhu area are taken to analyze the triaxial shearing behaviors of clayey-silty sediments containing tetrahydrofuran (THF) hydrates. The results indicate that the stress–strain curves of THF hydrate-bearing clayey-silty sediments show strain-hardening failure characteristics under a relatively low hydrate mass fraction (≤16.7%). Triaxial shearing strength, tangent modulus, and cohesion force increase with the increase of hydrate less fraction. However, prime results from pure THF hydrates reveal a brittle failure mode, which is totally different from that when hydrate mass fraction is more than 16.7%. Therefore, hydrate fraction (either mass fraction or volume fraction), rather than hydrate saturation, is strongly recommended to characterize the content of hydrate within clayey-silty sediments. The clayey-silty sediment-hydratemixed system is suggested to be divided into pure sediment, hydrate-bearing sediment (HBS), sediment-bearing hydrate (SBH), and pure hydrate, for which a universally applicable mechanical property evaluation method is thus established.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
A hyperspectral image (HSI) has a very high spectral resolution, which can reflect the target’s material properties well. However, the limited spatial resolution poses a constraint on its ...applicability. In recent years, some hyperspectral pansharpening studies have attempted to integrate HSI with PAN to improve the spatial resolution of HSI. Although some achievements have been made, there are still shortcomings, such as insufficient utilization of multi-scale spatial and spectral information, high computational complexity, and long network model inference time. To address the above issues, we propose a novel U-shaped hyperspectral pansharpening network with channel cross-concatenation and spatial–spectral attention mechanism (CCC-SSA-UNet). A novel channel cross-concatenation (CCC) method was designed to effectively enhance the fusion ability of different input source images and the fusion ability between feature maps at different levels. Regarding network design, integrating a UNet based on an encoder–decoder architecture with a spatial–spectral attention network (SSA-Net) based on residual spatial–spectral attention (Res-SSA) blocks further enhances the ability to extract spatial and spectral features. The experiment shows that our proposed CCC-SSA-UNet exhibits state-of-the-art performance and has a shorter inference runtime and lower GPU memory consumption than most of the existing hyperspectral pansharpening methods.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
ZnO/CuInS2 core/shell nanorods array thin film was synthesized on conducting glass substrates for photoelectrochemical water splitting via a simple hydrothermal and cation exchange reaction, using ...ZnO nanorods array as reactive template. Uniform CuInS2 films were obtained on the surface of ZnO nanorods, based on the ion-by-ion growth mechanism. The optical property of core/shell nanoarray was characterized, and enhanced absorption spectrum was observed. Hydrogen generation efficiency of 3.2% at 0.29 V versus saturated calomel electrode was achieved with synthesized ZnO/CuInS2 core/shell nanoarray electrode due to the improved absorption and appropriate energy gap structure. The synthesized core/shell nanoarray has potential application in photoelectrochemical water splitting.
► Uniform CuInS2 layer was synthesized on surface of ZnO naonrods via facile route. ► The expected products can be used for photoelectrochemical water splitting. ► High photocurrent was obtained due to the absorption spectra and band structure.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Gelatin gels are used as surrogates of human tissues to study their barrier effects on incoming reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) generated by surface air discharge. The penetration depth ...of nitrite into gelatin gel is measured in real time during plasma treatment, and the permeabilities of nitrite, nitrate, O3 and H2O2 through gelatin gel films are quantified by measuring their concentrations in the water underneath such films after plasma treatment. It is found that the penetration speed of nitrite increases linearly with the mass fraction of water in the gelatin gels, and the permeabilities of nitrite and O3 are comparably smaller than that for H2O2 and nitrate due to differences in their chemistry in gelatin gels. These results provide a quantitative basis to estimate the penetration processes of RONS in human tissues, and they also confirm that the composition of RONS is strongly dependent on the tissue depth and the plasma treatment time. A small electric field of up to 20 V cm−1 can greatly reduce the barrier effects of the tissue model regardless of their directions, for which the underlying mechanism is unclear. However, the electric field force on the objective RONS should not be the dominant mechanism.
The transportation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) to lesion site through human tissue is crucial for plasma medicine. For this reason, the spatial‐temporal distributions of ROS in model tissues ...irradiated by a He + O2 plasma jet were investigated in this paper. It was found that the ROS formed a ring‐shaped surface pattern on the model tissue, of which the diameter increased with the gas flow rate but remained unchanged with the plasma treatment time. The surface pattern changed significantly with the inclination angle of plasma irradiation, suggesting that the ROS dosage is difficult to precisely control for clinical applications. Moreover, the penetration depth of O3 increased linearly with the plasma treatment time or the water content of the model tissue.
The spatial‐temporal distributions of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in model tissues irradiated by a He+O2 plasma jet are obtained as a function of several important parameters. The underlying mechanism of the distribution of ROS in model tissues is investigated with numerical simulation and experiment. Moreover, the relation between the penetration depth of ROS and the water content of model tissues or plasma treatment time is formulated.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
A pilot-scale poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) film with a thickness of 2-20 μm, a width of 15 cm and a length of above 250 m was fabricated by using solution tape casting process. The crystallinity, ...dielectric and energy storage properties of the PVDF film were studied. The results displayed that there were predominant β phase in the PVDF film prepared at 60 °C, and coexistence of α and β phases at 80 °C. The PVDF film fabricated at 80 °C exhibited a dielectric constant of 8.7 and a dielectric loss of 3.8% at 1 kHz and room temperature. The discharged energy density calculated from D-E hysteresis loop reached to 10.1 J/cm 3 with charge-discharge efficiency of 37.9% at 550 MV/m.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug labels contain a broad array of information, ranging from adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to drug efficacy, risk-benefit consideration, and more. ...However, the labeling language used to describe these information is free text often containing ambiguous semantic descriptions, which poses a great challenge in retrieving useful information from the labeling text in a consistent and accurate fashion for comparative analysis across drugs. Consequently, this task has largely relied on the manual reading of the full text by experts, which is time consuming and labor intensive.
In this study, a novel text mining method with unsupervised learning in nature, called topic modeling, was applied to the drug labeling with a goal of discovering "topics" that group drugs with similar safety concerns and/or therapeutic uses together. A total of 794 FDA-approved drug labels were used in this study. First, the three labeling sections (i.e., Boxed Warning, Warnings and Precautions, Adverse Reactions) of each drug label were processed by the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA) to convert the free text of each label to the standard ADR terms. Next, the topic modeling approach with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was applied to generate 100 topics, each associated with a set of drugs grouped together based on the probability analysis. Lastly, the efficacy of the topic modeling was evaluated based on known information about the therapeutic uses and safety data of drugs.
The results demonstrate that drugs grouped by topics are associated with the same safety concerns and/or therapeutic uses with statistical significance (P<0.05). The identified topics have distinct context that can be directly linked to specific adverse events (e.g., liver injury or kidney injury) or therapeutic application (e.g., antiinfectives for systemic use). We were also able to identify potential adverse events that might arise from specific medications via topics.
The successful application of topic modeling on the FDA drug labeling demonstrates its potential utility as a hypothesis generation means to infer hidden relationships of concepts such as, in this study, drug safety and therapeutic use in the study of biomedical documents.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
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